Annie
by Black Hawk
Summary: Mitchell sits alone in his cell, wondering when Annie will come back. His heart remains where it fell on the floor, gathering dust as its bruising darkens.
1. Mask

_**Author's Note:** This story begins at the start of 3x08. It is an alternate telling of events._

**Annie**

**1. Mask**

Mitchell sits alone in his cell, wondering when Annie will come back. But Annie has overheard radio chatter and knows that Nina was wounded, so she rent-a-ghosted to the hospital. All Mitchell knows is that Annie said she'd be right back and she isn't.

A police captain peers at him through the slat in the door. He tells the other officers that they failed to report that the suspect was Irish. He claims Mitchell could be a member of the Real IRA with a device embedded somewhere in his skin to make technology like cameras fail.

The other officers don't believe him but they have no other explanation.

Men with guns arrive and Mitchell is handcuffed and shoved around. He keeps his head low and obeys their commands because, though he can't see much through his curtain of hair, he thinks Annie might be watching from somewhere.

He rides in the back of the van with guns surrounding him. He closes his eyes. They've been driving for some time. Too much time. They aren't just taking him to a prison with higher security.

His heart drops but the thought of Annie's smile helps him catch it before it hits the ground.

* * *

Mitchell doesn't resist as his hair is buzzed and he is given a prison uniform to don. The fabric is coarse and smells of foreign detergent but he puts it on and is left with nothing in his cell but gooseflesh and shivers. Backing into a corner, he hunkers down and peers about at the walls. There is only one camera and he knows it can't see him, but even so he wishes he had his hair to hide his eyes.

Where was Annie? How would she find him?

He couldn't blame her for abandoning him, and a part of him feels relief at the thought of never seeing her again. She deserved a better lover, a better life than him. This thought is followed by another that makes him feel selfish, for the idea of never seeing her again is too much to bear.

"Annie…" he whispers brokenly.

But Annie can't hear him. She is whispering life into Nina's ear. She is grinning as the doctors tell George that his girlfriend and baby are stable and seemingly on the mend. Once they are alone, Annie hugs him, and George weeps into her shoulder.

Even in her relief, there is a dark stain on the back wall of her mind, reminding her of Mitchell. But she turns on even more lights inside until she can't see the stain, because this moment is about joy.

* * *

Guards shout at Mitchell to stand and face the wall with his hands on his head. Though his limbs feel like lead, he obeys. His wrists are cuffed and he feels a prick in his arm. He tries to turn to see what just happened but is slammed against the wall. He winces as warmth and numbness spreads from his arm to his skull, dissolving his thoughts into mist.

His body sags and the guards guide his sluggish feet out the door and through a maze of lights and entryways. By the time he is aware that he is no longer walking, he is being strapped into a chair with leather restraints. The rough hands of the guards don't alarm his fuzzy senses, but the sight of his restrained limbs do. Yet even so, he can only do one thing to fight back.

He whispers "Annie."

"What was that?" A man in a lab coat asks as his assistant ties a band of rubber on Mitchell's bicep.

Mitchell raises his chin to look the doctor in the eye and sees that the man is holding a needle and tubing.

"Annie," he repeats, so quietly that he can't tell if it was any more than a thought.

"Who is Annie?" the doctor asks Mitchell, then the guards.

Getting no response, the doctor guides the needle into the crook of Mitchell's arm and collects blood. Lots of it. Scarlet flowing down the tube as easy as if it wasn't abandoning his body after the vampire had fought so hard for it.

As the cold from the blood loss begins to set in, Mitchell feels his heart growing unsteady, as if it might drop again.

By the time they are finished and tape him up with a little bandage, the drugs are wearing off and Mitchell knows that he's in a lab with no windows. He tries to focus on the notes the doctor is dictating to his assistant as he listens to Mitchell's heart and lungs, but all sound is drowned out by the bloodnoise of the artery in the man's neck, just inches from Mitchell's face.

Before he even realizes that he's staring, the doctor is backing away from him with fear.

"His eyes," the doctor whispers. "His eyes. They were black!"

Mitchell swallows past the dryness in his throat as he looks away from the doctor, cursing himself for his lapse in control. Where was his reminder that he was human? Annie… where was Annie?

Another prick in his arm, another flood of warmth and tingles. Yet no amount of drugs could distract him from the guards strapping something painful and pinching over his nose and mouth before snapping it tight behind his head. He squeezes his eyes shut as he waits for the tightness to be adjusted, but no relief comes.

His own hot breath mists back at him. Mask. It's a mask. He's been muzzled.

They know.

His heart teeters on the brink but doesn't fall until he is alone again in his cell.

The sedatives wear off, leaving his mouth dry and his skin cold. Sitting up, he drags himself into a corner and huddles, trying to maintain what little heat his half-dead body can produce. The mask bites into his cheekbones and he has no windows and doesn't know if it's night or day or how much time has passed since he last saw Annie.

"Annie…"

He doesn't even try to catch his heart as it falls and he lets it sit there on the floor with a fresh bruise as tears trace trails down his cheeks.

* * *

Annie watches over George as he sleeps in the chair by Nina's bed. The stain on the back wall of her mind is growing darker as the lights dim, but she ignores it. She is needed here. Mitchell is her forever, and George is only for the now.

Forever can wait.

Until after Nina is home safe and sound. Then after Nina has the baby. Then after the new family is settled. Then after the two parents get just one more good night of sleep with Annie watching Eve. Just one more.

And children in time-out shouldn't be allowed to sit with their friends. And Mitchell needed to atone.

Then Annie feels something tugging at her heart and she sees his eyes, his smile. She hears his voice and she nearly drops Eve.

He was a monster. But she abandoned him.

Helpless.

Frightened.

How could she have been so distracted? When had her mind turned so ghostly?

"Mitchell…" she whispers.

When George awakens, Annie shoves Eve in his arms.

"I have to go. Mitchell."

George scowls. He has been content to let his friend be punished for what he brought upon his little family.

"We don't even know where he is," George says.

"I'll find him." Annie's eyes are large and her jaw is set. "I should've found him ages ago."

"It's only been two weeks." He studies his baby and remembers that she has been home for some time. "Four?"

"Oh God…"

"He's safe in prison, Annie. Herrick can't get him. More importantly, he can't hurt anyone else."

Annie gives him a look of disgust mingled with gratitude before disappearing.

George studies his daughter's face and tells himself that the gnawing in his stomach is hunger and not guilt.

* * *

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	2. Fire-Bear

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**Annie**

**2. Fire-Bear**

Annie pops in and out of several prisons and is nearly in tears when she sees Herrick. He is pacing outside in his policeman's uniform, like a beacon telling her Mitchell is near. He offers her a smile.

"Ah, there you are."

"Where is he?" she asks, stalking across the parking lot beneath thunderheads.

Herrick nods towards the building behind him. "It's a research facility. The official line is that his name was cleared and he was released from police custody weeks ago."

Annie grasps the folds of her cowl to her throat. "What?"

"I can't get in. This is beyond my reach. Even in this guise."

"Thank God for that."

"Oh?" He arches a brow. "They know what he is, Annie. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought, for a moment, that you two were lovers."

There is a taunting quality to his voice that matches his smug expression. But Annie has gone so cold inside that she wonders if she could become the wind.

"Will you look at that," Herrick croons. "Your eyes have gone lavender."

Annie feels the wind cutting around her not-body and wills it to howl.

Herrick smiles. "You see, I can't get in there… but you can."

"Of course I can."

He closes the distance between them and the wind dies down. "Bring him to me," he whispers in her ear.

Annie sneers and cracks the cold inside her like glass. "Never."

Herrick's eyes darken. "I said, _they know what he is_."

"And so do I." Her voice is starting to shake so she does her best to steady it. "He isn't safe. What he did…" She closes her eyes and takes a breath. "He deserves this."

"Does a cat deserve to be punished for killing a bird?" He moves with slow steps, circling the ghost.

"What?"

"Or how about a child that stomps on a spider?"

Annie tucks her chin in. "That has nothing to do with –"

"It has _everything_ to do with it. Is a tiger evil because it hunts to eat? How many cows have died for your meals? How many chickens have you consumed? I'll bet you couldn't even venture a guess." He pauses before her.

"That's completely different."

"All life kills to feed. _All_."

"Not all."

He arches a brow. "You don't think that spinach was alive before someone plucked it?"

"They were innocent people, Herrick. _Twenty_ of them. And he didn't kill them to survive – he killed them out of anger. Revenge. Sport."

"Just as a kitten kills a garden snake then plays with its corpse. Or an orca a seal. A man a man." He narrows his eyes when he sees her blink. "Has there ever been a generation that truly did not know war? Men – _human_ men – killing each other for sport, because they were ordered to, because some rich bastard got upset with another rich bastard. And you dare say this is different?"

Annie can't meet his gaze so she focuses on a leaf skittering across the pavement in the distance.

"Death is death, Annie. Whether a person is innocent or guilty, killed on orders or for fun, it's all the same. I would think that you of all people would know that."

She meets his gaze then. "He hates it. He always has."

Herrick raises his brows. "And I hate him for it. You see, the funny thing about vampires is that our brains stop when we get bitten. Luckily, I have the brain of a fifty-year-old. Mitchell, however, will never develop beyond twenty-four. Malleable age, that. Yet still, that… strain of decency that just won't die, no matter how I try to… well."

He smiles as he remembers who he is speaking to.

"You have no _idea_ what it is like. We don't feel like angry men, or hungry men, or even desperate men. We exist in a realm beyond anything any human could ever feel. We exist in terror and frenzy and a voice screaming inside with lungs like a horse's, telling us to kill, always to kill. We are sharks. Yet even then… that doesn't even _begin_ to do the bloodlust justice. And yet you dare judge us?"

Annie holds her cowl shut against the wind as the storm approaches. "I pity you," she says quietly. "I really do."

Herrick glances her over with distaste. "I don't want your pity."

"I won't give you Mitchell," she says resolutely. "Let him go. Move on. He's not yours anymore. He's mine."

Herrick smirks. "Ah, yes. I should've known." He sighs and glances at the clouds. "You know, I think it might rain."

Annie doesn't take her eyes off him and she feels electricity crackle on her not-skin as over a hundred years of hate meets her gaze when Herrick looks back at her.

"I _made_ him. He is nothing without me."

"I'm sure you'll find another."

"You see, that's the curious thing. There ought to be far more of our kind, but the majority get themselves killed off the bat. So when you find a tough one… one whose spirit just won't break… you welcome it as a challenge."

Annie cocks her head with a small measure of satisfaction, her tone patronizing. "How disappointing for you. You said it yourself – Mitchell is decent. You have failed."

To her surprise, Herrick nods and starts to back up. "I do believe I have… but then, what do I matter?" He offers a parting smile then takes several steps away before glancing over his shoulder. "After all, you're doing the job for me."

Annie watches him leave and feels her entire not-body turn to cracking glass, and each shard is pricking her with guilt. The wind is icy and it's starting to rain and Mitchell is somewhere inside.

* * *

Mitchell was given a pair of thermals to wear under his prison garb but it doesn't ward off the chill, for it isn't coming from the outside. It is coming from the death in his bones and blood and sinew that is Vampyre. It comes from his heart that he never picked up. It remains where it fell on the floor, gathering dust as its bruising darkens, growing worse with time.

His body is sore and his muscles cramp but he can't do much more than curl up and drag himself from corner to corner. He is allowed to drink from a straw, for the muzzle-mask has slits in the front. But he hasn't had a bite to eat since the morning of his arrest.

He could tell them that he is hungry. That he needs to eat just like they do. But his bruised heart and his stained soul won't let him. So he drags himself under the cot like a dying spider and hides in the shadows. The cramped space makes him feel safe.

Hunger for food makes his thoughts sharp and crooked and they like to chase each other in circles. He usually doesn't notice until they've done a few laps.

Memories have surfaced, as well, melding themselves with dreams until he can't tell what really happened and what didn't.

But above all, the bloodlust hammers in his temples and gums, and under his fingernails, and the screaming gets a little louder with each passing day. The emptier his belly, the hungrier his veins.

Mitchell has never starved before. He'd come close to it a few times as a child, but never this bad. His mother had always been able to fix up potato skins or barley kernels into some sort of meal. He'd take the fish scales stuck to the bottom of the frying pan at this point. The marrow of bones. A whole fish raw, in fact. Raw and alive and full of blood –

He closes his eyes as his body breaks out in a clammy sweat. Don't think of the hungerpains. Think of her. Think of the sun.

But he sees his kills. He tastes them in his sleep. And he is so very frightened of himself that he hopes he is dying, even if that means ceasing to exist altogether.

The door to his cell opens and Mitchell doesn't budge except to sluggishly offer his arm to the doctor's assistant who has come to collect a sample. The guards are rather bored with his obedience and wish he would do something befitting his supposedly demonic nature so that they can come home with stories. Not that they're allowed to repeat anything they see here.

Mitchell can't even feel the cold of the alcohol wipe, nor the sting of the needle piercing his bruised flesh as blood is drawn. It has happened far too many times for him to do much more than close his eyes and will the orderly to leave.

He knows he's alone again when the door shuts and he hears the woman start chit-chatting with the guards. Relief floods him and he pulls his arm back in, tucking it to his chest.

The floor is growing colder and the air seems to be moving. But how can that be when there are no windows?

And what's that sound? Is someone crying?

He brushes his fingertips over his exposed cheekbone above the mask. His skin is dry. It isn't him. Then who is it?

Mitchell stiffens. Maybe the orderly didn't leave, after all. Maybe…

"What's happened to you?"

In that moment he feels the sun on his soul, has the urge to gnash his teeth like a mad dog, and realizes that Annie just tripped over his heart on the floor.

He shifts to look over his shoulder and sees the knitwear of her boots. Then the knees of her leggings and finally the rest of her as she kneels beside the cot.

Annie holds a hand over her mouth when she sees the mask up close and the red marks it has etched into the skin around it.

"Why is that _thing_ on your face?" she asks and her voice is full of the tears she's failing to hold back.

Mitchell blinks as he studies her, his own eyes misting over, because this can't be real. Annie left him. Annie is gone. Annie doesn't belong in this horrible, horrible place. Annie is smarter than that.

"Did you bite someone? Mitchell?"

She's so perfect. How can her inner beauty just radiate like that?

Annie sobs. "Mitchell, can you even hear me?"

_Yes_, he wants to answer. _I can hear you_. But he can't remember the last time he used his voice.

He still isn't sure if she's really there but he snakes his needle-bruised arm out anyway. Her fingers wrap around his and even though they're cold as death, they're warmer than him and they make the bruise on his heart start to fade as it beats faster.

"Annie?" he whispers so hoarsely that it barely sounds like a word.

Annie nods and squeezes his hand. "I'm here. I'm so sorry, Mitchell. What have they done to you?"

He shakes his head no, forgetting about the needles and the guards. She's real. Warmth spills from his eyes. She's real.

And even though he has a mask covering half of his face, Annie can tell that he is grinning, and that smile sets her ablaze. She shoves the cot aside and overturns it to shield them from view before lying down to wrap her arms around him.

"You're so cold. Even to me, you're so cold…. Are those your ribs?"

Her hands recoil.

Mitchell sits up slowly and waits until his head stops spinning before he meets her gaze once more. His arms move stiffly, as if he's afraid she'll vanish like a wisp of smoke, but he places a hand on either side of her face. "Annie?"

She smiles and nods. "I'm real." She kisses his palm, his forehead, his temple, and he closes his eyes and leans his brow against hers.

She wants to kiss his lips and traces her fingers along the straps securing the mask to his face but can't find a latch. Mitchell derails her hunt by collapsing against her in an embrace, burying his face in her neck. Moisture wicks his eyelashes and as she feels his thin, desperate form clinging to her, she is overwhelmed.

The lights buzz and flicker and one in the hall explodes.

He needed to be punished. He needed to give what he could to the families of his victims. But not this. She had never intended this. Her guilt threatens to choke her but it is frightened into a corner by a giant bear wreathed in flame. How dare someone lay a hand on her love.

Annie has never seen a starving person before but her instincts recognize the dullness and distance in Mitchell's hazel gaze. "Why aren't they feeding you?"

When she receives no response she shifts to get up and investigate but he lets out a small cry and fists his hands in her clothing. She has never heard so raw a sound and it stokes the fire in the bear as she cradles him. The lifelessness clinging to his frame terrifies her, and there is so much that she wants to say but something else comes out instead.

"I can't believe they cut your hair!"

What she can see of his face is smiling and she works her fingers through the softness on his head, toying with the forming cowlicks.

"I'm here now," she says through fresh tears as the bear roars to be let out. "I'll never leave you again, sweetheart."

His only response is to cling all the tighter.

She rocks him and hums quietly, but her humming turns into singing. He is sound asleep within minutes, though Annie never knew him to sleep soundly. That alone has convinced her to set the fire-bear free.

* * *

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	3. Pride

_**Thank you so much for all of your reviews and encouragement! It means so much to me in this new fandom. You all are awesome!**_

**Annie**

**3. Pride**

Annie gently shifts Mitchell to the ground and tucks him in with a blanket. She kisses his temple then walks through the door. The guards on the other side are chatting quietly and though the fire-bear wants to frighten them, Annie knows it will do no good.

So she stalks the halls and corridors. There was a time when she would've been afraid of the rage she feels, but she knows better. She chose Mitchell and he is her broken-winged bat and no one else's.

A woman in scrubs walks past and Annie follows her into a lab where a man in a white coat studies a computer monitor.

"Toxins are building. He'll be in kidney failure soon," the woman says. She places the vial of blood in a freezer and as Annie glimpses the interior, she gasps.

"Is _all_ that blood his?" Annie asks

The man sighs and rubs his eyes behind his glasses. Annie leans to the side to read his nameplate. Dr. Abandonato.

"You've stolen nearly half his blood and are starving him?"

The two discuss platelets and bone marrow; serum and proteins.

Annie steps closer to the monitor in front of Dr. Abandonato. A human genome is being compared to another.

"Are you… mapping Mitchell's DNA?"

Dr. Abandonato rolls his chair right through Annie as he reaches for a donut in a box on the filing chest.

Annie glares. "_Feed him_," she hisses in his ear.

She gets lost a few times but eventually finds her way back to Mictchell's cell. He is still asleep so she sits by his side and holds his hand in hers. The fire-bear has simmered down to embers that crackle and hiss with her thoughts.

* * *

Mitchell flinches awake when a slot on the bottom of his door is opened. Annie rests her hand between his bony shoulder blades, reminding him that she's there. His eyes crinkle in a smile when he sees her and Annie points to the door.

He follows her gaze. A child-sized container of applesauce sits on the floor, bearing a straw. The hope in his eyes extinguishes and he turns his back on it.

"Mitchell, it's food. Proper food."

He sits up, bringing his knees to his chest and hugging them, resting his forehead against the wall.

"Mitchell," Annie scolds. "You have to eat."

He closes his eyes. She sets her jaw.

"If you don't eat, you'll go into kidney failure and you'll die." She has hardly finished the sentence before she realizes that he knows this. That he wants this.

The fire-bear crumbles, its ashes blown away in the breeze.

"You _want_ to die?"

"Annie…"

"You want to _leave_ me?"

She expects him to dart wild eyes to her face. To have a quiver in his voice as he pleads. To latch on to her as he would have a month ago. Instead, he opens his eyes and stares at his knees.

Her stomach turns into a knotted piece of wood, and Annie can't tell if she's more disappointed that he denied her the triumph of groveling, or if she's more ashamed for having abandoned him.

"You selfish bastard," she spits out before she even knows what she's saying. "You haven't changed at all you know. You're still that weak, parasitic man you were when you were with Herrick."

He doesn't budge and her shame glows in her breast, torn between repentance and a lust to burn her wooden stomach up with regret.

"I should never have come back for you." Her voice is shaking. "You don't deserve me."

"Annie," he begins hoarsely as he turns to look at her.

One second of his soul-searing eyes is all she can take before her body becomes smoke and she pops out of his cell and back home.

"Oh! Hello," George greets her with a surprised smile. "Where have you been?" He narrows his eyes. "Annie, are you all right?"

She collapses in his arms, wracked with sobs.

"I failed him, George. I failed him so terribly."

"Who?" he asks as he tucks her curly head under his chin.

"Why am I made of poison?"

* * *

When Annie recovers her strength, she returns to the facility. Creeping down the hallway, she tiptoes into Mitchell's cell. She hopes her tantrum will have provoked him into eating to prove his worth. Her light dims when the applesauce still sits untouched by the door.

Mitchell watches her from the corner with red-rimmed, feline eyes.

She says his name as a pathetic plead and steps towards him. His shoulders tense but she takes another step then freezes when his eyes turn black. She studies him for a moment, not knowing that she has her foot on his heart on the floor, flattening it. Even after she sinks into the opposite corner to give him space, his heart does not inflate.

She thinks his eyes return to hazel but she can't tell because they keep slipping shut until first his shoulder slumps against the corner wall, then his temple.

She tears out her own pride out and throws it at the walls when she realizes that is the only comfortable position he can sleep in with the bulk of the mask on his face.

The applesauce is replaced with a protein shake and met with the same indifference. Followed by more fruit, baby food, pulverized oatmeal. Annie sticks to her corner because Mitchell only seems to wake up enough to reposition his forehead against the wall then fall back asleep.

The hours are broken only by the assistant taking blood samples, so Annie wanders the halls.

George filled her head with so many questions about this place. Questions that she couldn't answer. He wanted an escape plan. He wanted his friend back. All penance was paid in the same heartbeat that he learned of Mitchell's state. He shook Annie and screamed so loud that he woke Eve when the ghost kept sobbing and saying that she didn't know.

A part of her mind is drifting along a few steps behind her instead of in her head. She keeps thinking of George's white-blue eyes as he shouted and the memory replaces every new one she makes of the layout of the building, the number of staff, the names of the guards. It's as if she can't hold on to anything other than her own poison.

When she wanders back to Mitchell's cell, she is startled back into herself. He's gone.

* * *

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	4. Stranger

**Annie**

**4. Stranger**

"Mitchell? Mitchell!"

Something crashes down the hallway and she hears Dr. Abandonato cursing the Irish and their hunger strikes.

Dashing down the corridor, she finds Mitchell restrained by three grown men, wincing and coughing as a tube is fed through his nose and down into his stomach.

"What're you doing?" she barks. "Get off of him!"

She slaps and claws at one of the guards but he doesn't even flinch. The vampire is making such horrible gagging sounds that Annie is sure they're suffocating him. She rattles the door and makes the lights flicker but no one notices. They pour raw egg and milk and vitamins down the tube and a tear escapes Mitchell's unblinking eye.

Then every man in the room morphs to become Annie. She asked this of him. Yet, after all, who was _she_?

"You're doing the job for me," Herrick had said. He was right.

Who _was_ she?

Mitchell's guardian angel. His conscience. His better half. His manipulator. His dictator. His killer.

For she had wrapped her claws around his heart and whispered ultimatums knowing full well that his only other option was to let her tear it to bloody shreds in his chest. Like he was her puppet. Her affection was a weapon. Like Owen.

Mitchell gags again as they slowly pull the tube out.

She was his judge, jury and hangman.

And that becomes her chant as Mitchell is hauled out of his cell and restrained in a chair to be force-fed twice a day, every day.

_I'm sorry_ isn't good enough. And he won't listen to her, anyway.

He sits in his corner, huddled with his forehead against the wall so long that the brick imprints itself on his skin. His head is too heavy to hold up on its own.

She wants to speak to him. To hold him. But she dare not spread the poison of her self-righteousness to his withered form. So she sits in her corner and he in his and an ocean is between them.

The silence is broken on the fourth day when Mitchell lets out a low whine. Minutes later he cries out, grabbing his stomach.

"Mitchell?"

He topples over.

Annie is on her feet and ocean be damned, she walks on water to get to his side.

"What is it?"

"Annie!" he gasps. "Annie –" but he is cut off as a scream rips from his throat.

"Oh God." She grabs his shoulders and tries to get him to unfurl but he is locked in place. "Mitchell?"

His cheeks flush and a sheen of sweat makes his forehead glisten under the florescent lights. She hears one of the guards talking to Dr. Abandonato on his radio, but the doctor can't be there for another hour at least.

Annie decides not to repeat this information as she remembers that sometimes concentration camp survivors died from eating.

"Annie…" he whimpers and she's suddenly on her side next to him, pulling his tense body into her arms.

"I'm right here," she whispers against his flushed skin. "I'm right here." She hugs his head to her chest and winces as he cringes from another cramp. It feels like he's seizing as he shakes and the fire-bear is reborn with a roar. She places her palms on his temples, willing the pain to leave his body and enter her own.

Nothing happens, but someone is talking loudly outside the door. Someone familiar. Herrick.

"I feel there's been a distance between us lately."

She releases Mitchell and the voice vanishes.

The man pressed against her whimpers as the cramp passes and she touches him again.

Herrick is back.

"Yeah, I think I've been, maybe, unattentive to your needs. And that is why, from now on, I'm going to keep a very close eye on you."

She feels dread. Sees Herrick's ghoulish smile. Her insides curdle.

Herrick's face vanishes but he's never really gone. He sits in the back of her mind like a gargoyle. No matter how dark the shadows around him, his presence is never lost. But this isn't her mind at all. It's Mitchell's, and it has been forever branded by his maker.

Then it comes. Searing pain so intense that she cries out and yanks her hands away.

She is back in the cell and Mitchell is curled up like the dying spider he is and now she knows why.

Steeling herself, she closes her eyes and touches him again.

The pain is back, raging like fire in his veins with every beat of his heart. Something duller and more familiar throbs in his stomach, and she is confused because she remembers what a gut cramp feels like. This blood anguish is something separate.

They must've poisoned him. They must be torturing him with… no.

The burning veins aren't pain at all. They are white-hot voices, screaming something she can't understand. The cramp is back and part of her is aware of Mitchell's body grasping at her not-body but she can't understand why he thinks the sensation in his stomach hurts. Because it is nothing compared to his veins. To the molten blood that…

Blood.

It's the blood. _Kill_, his veins scream. It isn't a word or a command. It's an instinct. Something so primal that it reeks of the days of firelight and caves and fur clothing. From a time when the stars were aligned differently.

It screeches like machinery and hums like death. It crackles with electricity and as much as it is scorching his body, it is reminding him with every pulse that pain means he is alive, and that he will scratch and claw and gnaw whatever he can to stay that way. For this life-force is just as old as the fire in the caves, but more manic. And all of the steam and screaming and fire is tearing her in two at the very core. She endures it as long as she can until she splits.

Annie lets go of her lover and the grinding metal, heat and war-drums stop, leaving her frigid.

He lies beside her, his masked face pressed against her stomach, fisting her clothing.

She trembles as she gazes at him and wonders how he can even lie there and breathe with the racket going on inside. With the yowling of the bloodlust in his ears – the torture that rent her incorporeal body.

"That noise…" she whispers. "Does feeding make it stop?"

He doesn't reply but she knows the answer is yes. For a little while.

She closes her eyes. Judge, jury and hangman.

When she'd had no idea what it was like. How every second was a cacophony of bodily rage. And that was his normal. For nearly a hundred years, Mitchell had burned up inside. So long that the cramps now wracking his frame, the pain that had felt so dull and distant to Annie, was enough to overcome the familiar noise and cripple him.

"How can you function like this?" she asks. "How can you concentrate enough to speak? To hold a conversation that isn't just screaming? How can you walk or go to work or laugh? God, Mitchell. How can you laugh?" She combs shaking fingers through his cropped hair. "How can you love?"

If he wants to answer, he instead surrenders to a low growl as another cramp contracts his frame.

Annie hugs him to her, feeling like a stranger.

* * *

**_Please let me know what you think!_**


	5. Nina

**Annie**

**5. Nina**

By the time Dr. Abandonato arrives, the cramps have passed and Mitchell is as limp as death in her arms. She thinks she might be able to carry him if she tried. And she just might, for when the door opens, Annie is gone and the fire-bear is back.

She narrows her lavender eyes at the man as he waves his assistant in.

"Don't. You. Touch him."

Abandonato halts, fidgeting nervously with something in his pocket.

"Guard?" he calls.

A large man steps in and with a nod, points his weapon at Mitchell's limp form.

Annie rolls her eyes. "Really? Is your penis that small?"

The doctor and his assistant step closer and Annie growls lowly and tries to gather her vampire in her arms. The lights buzz and flicker.

The assistant grabs Abandonato's arm.

"What?" the doctor asks.

"I thought… it looked like his shoulder sort of… levitated."

Annie wishes she had fangs to shred the woman's stupidity.

The doctor looks to the guard for his opinion but the man doesn't seem to have one.

"Is it always this cold in here?" he asks.

His assistant shakes her head no.

"Stay away or I swear to God, I will make you regret it," Annie snarls.

The medical personnel hesitate before Abandonato's pride overcomes his sixth sense and he bustles forward, muttering a word that sounds suspiciously like "nonsense."

Annie tries to yank Mitchell away then slaps at the man's hands as he reaches for her lover.

"I said back off, fatty!" she barks. He pulls out a stethoscope and listens to Mitchell's chest. "If you don't move I'll kick your bloody face in!"

He closes his eyes as he listens then takes the vampire's pulse.

Annie lets out an exasperated scream then pounds the floor.

"It definitely looks like Refeeding Syndrome," Abandonato announces with a sigh, rocking back on his heels.

"Refee – what is that?" Annie asks with a squawk.

The assistant steps forward and takes a blood sample.

"Stop!" Annie cries, for she doesn't have to be in Mitchell's body to know that the more blood they take, the louder it gets inside.

"He's seen himself through the worst of it," the doctor announces as he rises. "Time will tell if he lives. But if the myths are right then it'll take a lot more than that to kill the bastard."

"What did you just call him?" Annie shouts.

The assistant has trouble finding a viable vein and Annie's body turns to frost as his arm is stabbed again and again.

"He's not a pincushion," she whimpers.

When the others leave and it's just the two of them, Annie paces and talks through possible escape plans with Mitchell, even though he is unconscious.

* * *

Nina is silent as she rocks Eve, her lips a taut line.

George has that look of carefully controlled rage on his face, and for a moment, Annie is envious that his curse only takes him once a month instead of every damn second.

"Well," Nina finally says, placing Eve in her crib. "Maybe it's not all bad."

Annie and George fix her with identical expressions of surprise.

"I mean, they're scientists, right? And they're examining his DNA. Maybe they can help him. Maybe they can find a cure."

"Oh Nina," George says as if she were his child. "Not this again."

She narrows her eyes at him. "Well excuse me for actually having a brain," she hisses.

"I don't even know what to say to that," George mutters, crossing over to Annie.

"And Annie has no idea where he is, much less how we can get him out, so I'm trying to be realistic here. He's stuck there. People aren't all that bad. Maybe –"

"Maybe they're like Dr. Jaggat?" George asks.

Nina gives him a patronizing look. "You'll never let me let that go, will you?"

George sighs. "That's not fair."

"He's a science project to them," Annie says as loud as she dares with a sleeping baby in the room. "A bloody lab rat. They stick him every day – so much that his arms are covered in these terrible bruises. And they haven't quite worked out yet that his body can't make new blood so he's running half on empty which only makes the bloodlust worse."

"Annie…" Nina begins.

"No. Don't 'Annie' me. Don't sit there as if you've ever given a damn about him. As if you've ever cared an ounce for his well-being –"

"He's a _vampire_, Annie," Nina hisses. "A leech. A manipulative, self-preserving parasite. He has his good qualities, sure, because he's learned how to masquerade as a human to reel in prey."

Annie opens her mouth to shout back but George beats her to it.

"Do you hear the words coming out of your mouth, Nina?"

Nina closes her eyes and takes a deep breath before opening them. "It's the truth, George. A friend would never have asked you to do the things he did. He made you an accomplice. He made you a murderer."

"No," George says breathlessly. "_I_ did that. _I_ made that choice. He tried to stop me but it was _my_ decision. Do you really think me so weak as to be so easily coaxed into killing someone?"

"You sure were easy to sway when Herrick turned up again."

"And we should have done," Annie says, her eyes shimmering. "We should have driven that stake right through his heart and stopped all this before it began."

"Killing Herrick wouldn't have changed a thing," Nina says. "You _wanted_ Mitchell to go to prison, or don't you remember?"

"Yes," Annie says, a tear escaping. "I remember all too well the torture I asked of the man I love."

"It's not your fault, Annie. He made his choices. Now he has to live with them. It's as simple as that," Nina states then heads for the door.

"No, it isn't. No it isn't at all. You have no idea what it's like to live as long as he has, to see what he has seen," Annie says as she follows Nina into the hall. "Let alone to survive every second despite that terrible, screaming noise in his veins that –"

"Survive?" Nina hisses, whipping around to face her on the stair. "And how has he survived, hmm? By _killing_, Annie. He's a murderer."

"You don't know him at all."

Nina guffaws and throws a hand in the air. "You're right. I must be crazy for not drinking the Mitchell Cool-Aid."

"He's a good man," Annie says, her jaw trembling.

"He may have been once," Nina admits. "But that was a long, long time ago. He's a monster, Annie. You need to let him go."

Annie shakes her head, more tears escaping as George quietly closes the attic door behind them and steps into the hall. "Look," Annie says. "I know you've never supported our relationship but at least try to –"

She is cut off by Nina's mirthless laugh. "_Relationship_? You called that a _relationship_?"

Annie narrows her eyes. "Call."

"Darling, you don't even know what a relationship _is_. Your last boyfriend _killed_ you."

"Gee, thanks for the reminder."

"Could we, um, take this… _discussion_… elsewhere?" George asks, gesturing to the door separating them from the sleeping baby.

"What George and I have is a relationship," Nina snips, utilizing his interruption to point him out. "It is built on love and trust. Not lies and addictive need."

"If he's so damn manipulative," Annie hisses, leaning down from her stair to be level with Nina. "If he mimics human kindness to reel in his victims then why did he choose me, huh?" George reaches an arm between them in an attempt to separate the two. "Why did he fall in love with a girl whose body can't even fuck him?"

George's mouth falls agape and he pulls his arm back. "Such language, Annie. I mean… you seem so proper…" He clears his throat when both women narrow their eyes at him.

"It's true, George," Annie snaps with an arched brow. "He can't even have sex with me let alone bite me. In fact, he made it very clear from the start that that wasn't going to be a part of our –"

"What about that girl from the club?" Nina hisses.

"That was my idea, not his," Annie hisses back, feeling a twinge of satisfaction at Nina and George's surprised expressions. She folds her arms over her chest. "That's right. I said it." But Annie's triumph fizzles at the memory of how the experiment had ended. "But I couldn't even have that, could I? You think I don't know how messed up and abnormal our relationship is? You think you have to _remind_ me?"

Nina scratches the back of her neck. "He chose you, Annie," she says quietly. "Because you are strong and he is weak. Because the only good part of him left hates what he is. But he doesn't love you."

"Nina…" George breathes.

"He doesn't love her because if he did, he would have told her," Nina snaps. "He would have confessed his sins. He would have begged for forgiveness. He would have turned himself in instead of subjecting us all to his guilt. He is selfish, George. He is the most selfish person I have ever met. Think on that. Both of you."

Annie can't see her friend in the woman in front of her. "He's not," she whispers, her cheeks wet with tears. "You are."

Nina rolls her eyes.

"He didn't tell me," Annie says brokenly. "Because in the scale of his life, it wasn't time. He was in the trenches, Nina. Where men ripped each other apart. Where an entire generation was _slaughtered_. Owen killed me because he was jealous and angry, and he felt no remorse. And he's _human_. Mitchell kills because he has no choice. I've been in his body and I've seen what it's like and he literally has _no_ choice because death isn't an option. And I don't care if you can't understand what that's like. I don't care if you can't see that for him to feel any remorse at all is more than most people could ever manage in his situation. You have this wickedness in you, Nina. A wickedness that would have taken over if you were him. And I pity you for that. And I love him all the more for his flaws.

"Mitchell didn't tell me, Nina, because nothing he could do would bring those people back. But mostly, he didn't tell me because he knew I'd ask him to turn himself in. And I did. He wants to be punished. He isn't fighting. He's letting them kill him. But he was trying to protect us, Nina. All of us. Because he knows that once humans find out what we are, it will make being hunted by our own kind look like child's play. And he loves us too much to see us hurt any more. Even you."

Her cheeks are dry and she walks through Nina's body and down the stairs.

Nina casts George a glance but he is staring at his feet.

"George?"

"I think the fact that he's a vampire has nothing to do with your hatred of him," he says slowly. "You took back your chance to turn him in. I think you've always hated him because I love him."

He meets her eyes then, and his gaze is teary before he brushes past her to descend the stairs.

* * *

**_Please share your thoughts!_**


	6. Unthawing

**Annie**

**6. Unthawing**

When Annie returns to Mitchell's cell, he's awake and back in his usual spot in the corner, and she's never seen him look more haggard. He ought to have a beard, or at least more than the stubble dusting his cheeks around the mask. In fact, he ought to have longer hair by now, as well. It's as if his body has stopped all non-essential processes just to survive. The doctors must be going apeshit.

He jerks his head up as her heel scuffs the floor and her heart lifts out of her wooden stomach, for there is alertness in his eyes that she hasn't seen since she abandoned him weeks ago. Annie grins and he smiles back.

"Feeling better?"

He nods and braces a palm against the wall. She's worried he's having another cramp but instead he shakily gets to his feet, crosses the room, and wraps her in his arms. Annie closes her eyes as a damn bursts inside and she kisses him everywhere she can.

His thumb on her cheek surprises her as he wipes away a tear she doesn't realize she's shed. "Annie?"

She forces a smile. "They'll just never understand."

He furrows his brows questioningly.

"Nina. And everyone like her. They'll never understand the strength of our spirits. That the bliss you give me will always outweigh the bad. _I_ don't deserve _you_, John Mitchell."

He casts his eyes about the floor to try to find his heart to give to her again, but it's been kicked into a corner where he can't see it.

They lie down together on the cot, and she hunts around the back of his skull, trying to find a way to take the mask off his face, because she needs to see his smile and touch his lips, but nothing can be done. So instead, they whisper about better times.

The pink house. _The Real Hustle_. Their accidental kiss that each relived again and again in secret.

Then they run out of shared memories and Annie finds herself talking about her childhood, and he wants to know every detail. She tells him how her mother used to make her the best chocolate cakes for her birthday, and he confesses a weakness for chocolate. She shares the fights she had with her sister and how important they had seemed at the time. He confesses that he wasn't really an only child. He'd had three sisters. None of them lived beyond age ten.

And she marvels at how much she has taken for granted. At just how hard surviving had been a hundred years ago. At how much change Mitchell has seen. At just how old he really is, and yet how child-like and naïve. And how is it possible to hang onto that innocence? That thirst for redemption after what he has done?

She can't tell when day ends and night begins, so she doesn't notice the passing of the days as they weave their own web of whispers and secrets and dull warmth from their bodies pressed together, unthawing. Like a hidden fort that only they know the password to.

She misses the sensation of his lips on hers. They ignore the force-feeding and blood-taking because it has no place in their fantasy.

* * *

When it's clear that he is improving, the doors open. But this time, it isn't the assistant. It's the guards. They prod Mitchell with their guns and escort him out into the hall and into a new room. Annie follows him and hugs herself as he is placed in restraints in a chair across from a bespectacled man with a salt and pepper goatee.

He smiles at Mitchell once the guards leave and introduces himself as a psychologist. He asks Mitchell where he was born, and for the first time since he has arrived, Mitchell answers someone's question. The psychologist can't hide his thrill of victory, having been told of the prisoner's silence, no doubt.

"I have family in Co. Cork," he says. "Which village?"

Mitchell smiles a little as he answers, but doesn't tell him that he's actually from Kerry and that he wouldn't give him the names of his dead sisters for all the gold in the world.

Annie plays in a swivel chair behind the psychologist and Mitchell occasionally looks her way with amusement. Their stolen glances end when the psychologist's voice drops an octave.

"Where are the others of your kind?"

Though he knows he can't see it behind his mask, Mitchell presses his lips together.

"How many are there?"

Mitchell looks down at his restraints.

"Are you thinking of killing me right now?"

Mitchell's gaze darts up to the man's brown. Annie stops spinning her chair.

"Like you did to the Box Tunnel Twenty?" Upon receiving a glower in response, he raises his brows. "I'm your friend in this. We know you had an accomplice. They found another set of prints. We know there are more of you."

Mitchell's eyes dart to Annie's doe face and the psychologist follows his gaze to the empty chair.

"Who is... _Annie_?"

The vampire's glower fades.

The psychologist shrugs. "We may not be able to see you on the cameras, but we can hear you. You talk to her a lot, don't you?"

Mitchell's eyes harden and he fixes them on his hands.

"Is she someone you knew? A girlfriend, perhaps?"

Annie marches up behind him and arches a brow. "Jealous, are you?"

"All right. I think we've done enough for today."

And just like that, they escort him back to his cell.

"What a nutter," Annie barks with a laugh once they're alone. "Bet he thinks he has everything all figured out."

But Mitchell is stiff as he sits down on the cot.

"Mitchell?"

* * *

Though it has been weeks, Annie pops back to Honolulu Heights while Dr. Abandonato gives Mitchell a blood transfusion that they both know will do no good.

She rent-a-ghosts into the attic while George and Nina share breakfast downstairs. Eve is sound asleep and perfect. Annie scoops her up and hums in her ear. She closes her eyes and feels the baby's heartbeat.

"When did you get here?" George asks with a grin when she comes downstairs.

He hugs her tightly and Nina awkwardly starts washing dishes.

"How have you been getting on with no tea to make?" he asks.

"What?" She didn't even realize that she'd forgotten until that moment. "You're right…"

"How's Mitchell?"

"He's giving them the silent treatment."

George offers her a chair then sits down beside her. "You mean they're asking? About us?"

Annie nods, finding this all very odd. Happy people who can eat whenever they wish. With blankets and pillows and windows.

"Herrick came by the other day," Nina bursts out. They both look at her but she is leaning on the counter with her back to them. "Wanted to know what we knew about Mitchell. Said the only reason he didn't kill us all was because we were the only ones with updated information." She looks at Annie.

"He was here?" Annie gasps. "In the house?"

"No," George says quietly. "We've taken measures against that. A sort of… shaman came over and… holied the place up or what not. He couldn't get closer than the street."

"The point is," Nina continues. "That even though he's locked up, we're never going to be rid of Mitchell, are we?'

"We should have killed Herrick when we had the chance," George muses.

"I'm sorry," Annie says quietly. "You have George and Eve and… I'm sorry. It's me he should be harassing. Not you."

"The thing is," George says carefully. "It got me wondering. If even Herrick can't get him out…"

"We know, George." Annie holds her head high and her voice is soft. "We know there's no way out."

George's eyes shimmer. "Annie, please… tell him…" He wipes the moisture from behind his glasses. "I just wish I could see him again."

Annie hugs him as he loses the fight and cries. Nina watches then quietly sets down the plates she was washing.

* * *

"How many vampires do you know?"

Mitchell keeps his eyes downcast.

"What about other supernatural beings. Are any of those real?"

_Only your mam_, Mitchell wants to say.

"All right." The psychologist slams his notebook shut. "It's been weeks and we're getting nowhere. Time to try a new tactic."

He leaves the room and Mitchell squeezes his eyes closed.

"It'll all be fine," Annie says with a smile as she hops off the chair in the back and rubs his shoulder. "You'll see. They'll give up after a while and it'll be back to you and me."

The door opens and the psychologist returns with a man in uniform. Military uniform.

Mitchell studies him through a slanted gaze. He smells of gunfire and cruelty.

"John Mitchell, I am Col. Covington. I'm here to ask you some questions."

The vampire averts his eyes as the colonel stands across from him. A device is brought into the room and Mitchell is fitted with wires.

"What is that?" Annie asks, her voice shrill. "What're you doing?"

"This is all just a precaution," the colonel explains as if he were discussing the framing of a house. "So long as you cooperate, there will be no need to use it."

Mitchell meets his gaze then, and he doesn't need to speak to call the man a liar.

When the vampire refuses to answer his first question, the machine hums and Annie screams. Followed by Mitchell.

* * *

_**Please share your thoughts!**_


	7. Betrayed

_**This is the second to last chapter, but fear not! I have another Annie/Mitchell story in the works, along with several for **_**T****he Hobbit**_**. Stay tuned and thank you for your support, dear readers!**_

**Annie**

**7. Betrayed**

Mitchell can't stop crying, even after he has been dragged back to his cell. He pulls himself into his corner, pressing into the shadows, trying to disappear. His muscles still jerk spasmodically from the electric currents forced upon them. He doesn't even know why he's crying.

The pain, yes. But it's more than that. He feels like a child. Helpless. Weak. But this isn't new.

What's new is knowing that he truly has no control. That his body that has spent years screaming torturous sounds in his brain has betrayed him. The flesh that wouldn't obey him no matter how hard he tried has answered the commands of his captors at the flip of a switch. He no longer owns any shred of personhood. Except for Annie, and she can't stop crying either.

He is small and broken and is dragging her down with him.

His heart is dry and cracking in the corner.

When the trembling slows, he feels her hands on his spine and leans into her. She whispers lies of comfort and he loves her for it.

* * *

"Annie does not exist."

Mitchell has bags under his eyes and the mask makes him look more inhuman than he ever could as a vampire as he drags his tired gaze to the psychologist's.

"She is a figment of your loneliness. Your guilt. You are alone."

"Liar," Annie snarls. "No one will ever love you how I love him."

Mitchell's eyes warm and settle upon her at that and she smiles. The other man merely sighs and turns the dial, and the crackle of electricity and screaming spoils the moment.

* * *

Dr. Abandonato has long since ceased to draw daily blood samples. His assistant rarely comes in with her vials, yet even so, Mitchell still offers his arm to her whenever she does. Despite Annie's scolding.

He doesn't talk about the old days anymore.

As he recovers in the corner, trembling and sweating after being tortured, he looks nearly comatose. Annie places a hand on his temple and is transported to a house from another time. If it can even be called a house. She sits on the hearth, fighting the urge to lean as close to the flames as possible because it's so damn cold and she is Mitchell as a child. A sister sits on either side of him, one older, one younger, and they are all huddled together. Their bellies are empty and clawing.

But their ears and hearts are delighted as their mother paces and sings, rocking an ailing toddler. She sings a traditional song that Annie has heard before, but Annie has forgotten what simple pleasures there are in candlelight and beautiful voices.

"Come here, Johnny," a tall, thin man says, and she runs to him and crawls up into his warm lap. Mitchell doesn't much look like his father, but there's enough of the bearded man's face in him to be recognized. He smells of pipe smoke and peat and rocks him back and forth, rubbing his back, and she feels safe and loved. The fire crackles, his mother hums, and they all pretend the youngest isn't dying.

Annie pulls her hand away and leaves Mitchell to the rolling green of another time and place. The realization that she has never asked if he ever gets homesick makes her feel selfish. She vows to do all she can to comfort him, but compared to his father, she will never be enough.

She wonders how she ever thought this would work.

Mitchell asks her not to come with him to questioning anymore, and she agrees. Then he asks her what wind feels like.

* * *

Col. Covington watches the voltage climb higher and higher and Mitchell grow quieter and quieter against the pain. No one lasts this long without breaking. So he snaps instead of the vampire.

With a scream, he punches the restrained man hard enough to knock him from the chair, his blood splattering on his boots. By the time the colonel is pulled away, he has landed several solid kicks to the vampire's abdomen. The two are hastily separated, and Mitchell is thrown, wheezing and bleeding, into his cell.

Annie squawks and blows out all the overhead bulbs but immediately regrets it for now she can't assess his injuries. Emergency lights click on, casting an eerie blue glow about the cell. Mitchell has dragged himself to his corner.

She touches his shoulder and he winces and hisses with blackened eyes and she recoils. Even after he recognizes her, his eyes don't shift back. His bruising flesh is swelling around the mask and he looks so volatile and pathetic that she is reminded of a run over dog on the side of the road that she hopes someone else will help. But there is no one else to help him.

"It's only me," she says quietly.

He shakes his head no, and for the first time, she accepts just how mottled his reality has become. After all, _Annie doesn't exist_ has been drilled into his head for weeks.

Yet still, she holds him, and after the adrenaline wears off, he rests his head on her shoulder. She isn't sure if he really knows she's there, of he's just too tired to care, but when she touches him, she sees the pink house, and George laughing.

* * *

"I thought I might find you here," Annie says.

Herrick turns away from the rubbish bin to face her with a smile, looking frumpy in his garbage man's uniform.

"It hasn't even been a year," the vampire croons. "Yet here you are, morals be damned."

She narrows her eyes. "This isn't about morals."

"Isn't it?"

"It's about Mitchell."

"One can hardly separate the two," he says with a smirk then wipes at his forehead. "But I'm sure you didn't track me down just to hear my philosophical ramblings."

Annie steps up to him, the armor placed around her heart glistening in the sunlight. "I need your help."

"My dear." He grins. "I thought you'd never ask."

"I'm asking now."

He closes his eyes and breathes deeply through his nose.

"What're you doing?"

He holds up a gloved hand to silence her. "Savoring the moment."

She tilts her head. "Can you not be a monomaniacal twat just this once?"

Herrick snaps his eyes open with a flash of anger that Annie relishes.

"We need to get him out."

Herrick chuckles. "_We_ don't need to do anything."

She tries to ignore the thinning of her heart's armor.

"You see, the look on your face tells me everything. Mitchell is clearly suffering. But you intended for that, so it's something more." He narrows his eyes as he peers at her. "He's retreating into his mind, away from you. You're worried he'll never come back. That the man you supposedly love is gone."

Her body is snowflakes fluttering around her armored heart under his truth. "There is no 'supposedly' when it comes to my love."

"You see, I only wanted to get Mitchell out of there to protect myself. It's clear now that he's more than willing to be our martyr. In fact, he's probably enjoying it. The fool has hated himself since his first kill." He grabs a trash can. "I find myself in the unique, glorious position of knowing that he is wasting away, dying a slow and painful death. Maybe it will take years. But if I can't have him, no one can."

The snowflakes turn to icicles. "He was your friend."

"Mitchell was many things to me. Friend he was not. Well, I'm sure _he_ thought we were friends. Me? I just liked having him around. I planned to use him up right away but then I saw how fun his resilience could be." He shrugs. "I would've staked him at the drop of a hat if it would get me further. In fact, I did once, didn't I?" He smiles tauntingly.

She can't tell if he's lying to hide his pain or if he's telling the truth, but the way he's relishing her expression makes the latter seem far more possible.

"It may take decades," she says, "centuries, even. But one day you will realize just how rotten and hollow you are inside… and what's waiting for you on the other side might not seem all that bad. But trust me. It is. I've been there."

With an arch of the brow, she turns on her heels and pops back to the facility, leaving Herrick behind with his slack jaw.

* * *

**_Please share your thoughts!_**


	8. Carefree

**Annie**

**8. Carefree**

Dr. Abandonato and his assistant are having a heated discussion with Col. Covington in the hallway.

"We have no idea when we'll find another. It's in our best interest to –"

"No," the colonel says. "If there's one, there are dozens. Maybe hundreds. You'll have another."

The thinned armor around Annie's heart shatters into a startled flock of birds as she dashes into Mitchell's cell. Someone has placed him on the cot and his skin is waxy and pale as the moon.

"Mitchell?!"

She falls to her knees at his side, the words spoken outside ringing in her head like a death knell.

He opens his eyes and she sees her own reflection in their glassy depths. She takes his hand with a smile and his eyes start to crinkle only to be snapped shut as he lurches forward and gags. Annie leans back and for a moment, nothing happens. Then foamy blood spills out of the slits in the mask and she gasps.

Backing up, she leaves room for the doctor to come in, but all he does is peer through the grate in the top of the door. Covington says something snippy and the two get in an argument.

"Someone _help_ him," Annie shouts. "Please!"

The men outside quiet and there's a chime, like a button. Mitchell's face buzzes as the mask shifts then falls off and clatters to the floor. He stares at it in bewilderment for a moment before vomiting again, covering it with dark blood. Annie can do no more than rest her hands on his back as he retches up what he so preciously needs.

The wild birds of her heart-armor have all scattered to distant roosts and she can hardly think.

But when he's done and she's helping him ease back onto the cot, Annie can't stop grinning because she can see his face again. Properly. The outline of the abomination is still etched on his cheeks and his lips are bloodstained but she can finally see him. Even if they only took it off because dying animals are no longer dangerous.

The men shuffle away, leaving only the guards, and she uses her sleeve to wipe off his face. He watches her expression as she does so, then tries to say something about a broken rib piercing him inside but she hushes him.

Looking around, she finds his heart on the floor in the corner. It is dull and dingy but comes alive in her hands, glowing and beating. She dusts it off and gives it back to him with a smile then sits down on the floor beside him.

"I can kiss you now," she says.

His eyes are stormy and flickering with confusion and she knows that despite Herrick's prediction, they only have minutes. Running a hand through the down of his cropped hair, she presses her lips to his. They are cold, even compared to hers, but he closes his eyes and kisses her back.

His heart rests between them and grows louder with each beat.

"Annie," he says with a smile, as if he just likes the sound of her name.

"_Your_ Annie," she says, taking his limp hand in hers and kissing each knuckle. "And I always will be."

He squeezes her hand and confesses that he felt her ripped from his soul when she was taken from them. That from that moment on, she was his everything. That he would endure all of this again and again and again if it would make her happy. That he wants her to bury his heart next to hers.

Then the pain in his belly starts short-circuiting his thoughts and he can't quite answer her plea for forgiveness. He can feel the blood rising in his throat and doesn't have the strength to retch again.

"George loves you so much," Annie says as the birds of her heart dart about in a wild panic, for finality has discolored his hazel gaze.

She presses his hand to her teary cheek and his eyes look so sad that she lets out a sob. "We can't be made for this kind of suffering," she gasps. "There must be another life. And I swear I will find you in it."

His heart beats louder and slower and they pretend that they can't hear it as they kiss again, but it is getting harder to move his lips and he's freezing.

Annie doesn't know the words but hums the song his mother did in his memory.

"Annie," he gasps, as if in warning, then trembles and strains as his heart lets out dull, erratic thuds.

His death throes are the worst thing she has ever seen, but she sets herself aside and continues to hum, running her fingers through his hair. The part set outside of herself notices that his heart has flickered and gone out and has crumbled into cold ash, but the rest of her is happy to ignore this information.

He is so peaceful and still that he looks like he's sleeping, so Annie keeps humming and caressing his head. Because no ghost has stepped out of his body, and no door has appeared, and the reality of what has happened is already trying to choke her.

* * *

George has his face buried in the armrest of the couch as he gasps for air, his body shaking. Nina absently runs a hand along his spine, tears slipping down her cheeks. George sobs loudly again and Eve starts crying in the other room.

Annie stands before them in a grey shawl, shifting uncomfortably, her cheeks moist. "He loved you, George. So very much."

George screams his dead friend's name into the upholstery.

"I didn't know vampires could die like that," Nina says numbly. She looks vulnerable and Annie is reminded of the little girl she must've once been, frightened and abused. She wonders if Nina has always had to have someone to blame, just as her mother blamed her.

"Had he been stronger, he would have survived. But they wore him down," Annie says quietly.

"Was it… painful?" Nina asks.

Annie holds her chin higher. Her specter is thin, for her not-body dimmed and faded some the moment she finally pulled herself off of her lover's corpse. She needs no armor for her heart anymore, because her heart is now buried beside the ash of Mitchell's in her grave. "Yes. He suffered. They tortured him. They beat him."

"Oh God," George whines, and Nina tries to get him to sit up straight because he's hyperventilating.

"George, look at me," Nina says. "Take slow, steady breaths."

George does his best to comply but his whole body is flushed and stuttering. "I should have tried harder. I don't even remember what the last thing was that I said to him. Oh God, I'll never see him again, will I?"

Annie shakes her head pathetically. "There was no ghost."

"No ghost?" George repeats incredulously.

"We don't know if that means anything, necessarily," Nina tries to soothe.

"He isn't suffering anymore, George," Annie says, wiping at her cheeks. "He wanted this. He's finally free."

"What freedom is there if he ceased to exist?" George asks.

"He's not in pain anymore," Nina reiterates.

"That's right." Annie nods. "And he was in pain for nearly a hundred years." This is what she tells herself nearly every minute, because her mind and soul are shredded raw and she can't process much more than that small comfort.

"Mitchell," George sobs and Nina hugs him, resting her chin on his shoulder.

"There's something else," Annie adds, her voice strong. "They knew what he was. They know there are more of his kind. So… I think you ought to move. Because you're the first people they're going to look for in their search for others."

Nina nods but George has hardly heard her. "Where… where is his body?"

"They kept it. It's probably in a thousand pieces under a microscope by now."

George whimpers. "They've denied him even that dignity."

"I'm afraid so."

Nina fixes Annie with apologetic eyes. "Thank you."

Annie hesitates but nods.

Later, she lies in Mitchell's bed and cries so hard that all of the lights on the street go out.

* * *

They find a cottage in the country where Eve will have her own room. It's a fixer-upper but George doesn't mind the idea of working on the house. It gives him something to focus on. Nina gets a job at the local hospital and George takes care of his daughter, rather relishing the title of stay at home dad.

Annie helps him when she can, though not having a body leaves her renovation skills rather lacking. The spring breeze comes in through the window and Annie looks out at the glimpse of the sea in the distance.

"They say you can see Ireland out there on clear days," George remarks, readying his hammer.

"Oh?"

He doesn't miss her dreamy voice. "An old wives tale, I'm sure."

"Still… it's nice to know that it's close."

George offers her a small smile, even though her glazed eyes are turned away from him.

She tells herself that Mitchell not having a soul is a good thing, for she caused his death and can only imagine the level of betrayal he would feel. He never forgave her, after all. And she wouldn't deserve it if he had. With him no longer existing, he is safe from her harm.

Some of the newspaper lining the floor around where they're working kicks up in the breeze. Annie's feathers are ruffled by the rattling and as she drags the leaf back, she notices an article about a waste management worker's body having been found in a vat of cement.

* * *

Her door arrives one night months later, when the family is settled into their home and it has been made tight for the winter. She is sitting in an armchair beside the fire, thinking of Mitchell's dead sisters and toying with her curls when it appears.

She heads upstairs and holds Eve one last time, thankful that the little girl is not a werewolf. Then she slips into George and Nina's room and kisses them both on their foreheads.

George stirs. "Annie? What is it?"

"Nothing," she whispers. "I love you."

"Love you, too," he mumbles before falling back asleep and Annie smiles.

When she opens her door and steps through, she expects to see the familiar drab halls of Purgatory. Instead, her knitted boots step onto grass and rolling green countryside. Stone fences.

She smiles when she realizes where she is, but her hope dims when she sees no sign of humans other than a cottage in the distance.

"Annie," a familiar, husky voice whispers in her ear, and she turns around to find John Mitchell waiting for her with coal-black curls bouncing in the wind, and the widest, most carefree smile that she has ever seen.

The end.

* * *

**_Thank you all so much for your support! _**

**_I gave myself several creative challenges while writing this story, and one of them was to have "Annie" be the only word Mitchell ever says in-scene. I didn't set out with that goal but as I started writing, I realized that her name was the most powerful thing he could ever say, for she is the most important presence in his life and that one little word can encompass so much with each new context._**

**_Thank you all once again and please keep your eyes peeled for future stories! :)_**


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